Page 6 of Her Age Gap Match

I felt my face burning.

“I was just—it’s a professional observation,” I said. “He’s a good client. He’s always really kind when he comes in, and I think it’s a shame that it’s not working out, that’s all.”

“Mmhm,” Jasper said.

Sophie watched me carefully. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to argue anymore—not in front of my boss.

Finally, she nodded and moved on…thank god.

“Cole,” she said. “Let’s talk paperwork. What are we talking about per appointment setting this week?”

I made it through the rest of the meeting on autopilot.

Cole talked through the IVF paperwork for the Nguyens, then got into some updated language he wanted to add to the standard surrogacy agreements after a case he'd seen go sideways with a client outside of Bloom. Sophie asked good questions. I took good notes. Jasper offered exactly one legal opinion, which was that contracts were Cole's department and the algorithm's job was to make sure you didn't need a custody lawyer in the first place.

By nine o’clock we were packing up. Sophie had an early client in the morning…Cole, as I understood it, always went to bed at nine so he could go to the gym at the crack of dawn. He and Sophie left together, Sophie to walk around the block to her house, Cole to his fancy apartment for a lonely dinner.

I was pulling on my coat when Jasper appeared in the doorway of the conference room. I flashed him a smile. “You staying late tonight for some tinkering?” I asked.

“Mm…in a manner of speaking,” he said.

I waited.

Jasper took a step inside the room. “You like him,” he said.

I snorted. “Cole? Actually, I think I kind of hate him.”

“Nope,” Jasper said, shaking his head. “Johnny Lawson. You like him.”

“I do not,” I argued. “He’s like…twice my age⁠—”

Jasper held up a piece of paper, waving it in the air. “—and he’s a 99% match with you in our system.”

I stared at the paper.

“That’s—” I paused. “Jasper, I’m not in the system. I’m not a client.”

“Buuut you filled out the questionnaire two years ago,” he said. “When I was stress testing the algorithm and needed real profiles.”

My eyes flitted from his face to the paper. I desperately wanted to see it. He knew that…he knew it and he was withholding to be a jerk.

“Why?” I asked.

Jasper shrugged. “I just see the way you look at him and hear the way you talk about him. I knew Sophie wouldn’t approve, but I couldn’t resist. And then…look who turned out to be a perfect match.”

He held out the paper.

I glared. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Jasper said. “I just love love, okay?”

I snatched the report out of his hands.

It was a run-of-the-mill report…front and back, dense with data, analytics from our system. I’d processed hundreds of these for Sophie over the years, so many that I knew what the numbers meant.

And the numbers…they didn’t lie.

Overall index: 99%. Both long-game thinkers, two people who made decisions based on decades rather than moments. Analog couples with similar reports? There’d been three of them, and all were married with kids.